This year’s Lent and Holy Week is extra special and meaningful for me and my family because of 5 main reasons.

Let me share each one of them.

#5 is that we were able to attend at least one online recollection as a family. Before the pandemic, this is one of our must-do lists during Lent. Thus, I am grateful that when the pandemic happened, there were parishes and communities that made their Lenten recollections online. Personally, I joined 3 online recollections. The first few months of this year have been an extra challenging year for me and my family because of my father’s passing. Because of this, I felt that I needed more time with God to find strength, courage, and hope. One of the recollections I attended was led by Fr. Dave Conception. I also attended his online recollection last year. I love that his recollections are so packed with wisdom as well as humor.

#4 is that our family was able to join the annual Holy Week Retreat of our community online. This is also one of our family’s traditions every year and we look forward to it, even the kids. Our kids, most especially our eldest child, anticipate the new songs that they will hear and learn during this week. He even makes a playlist on Spotify for these songs and plays these songs over and over until he learns to play these songs on the piano.

#3 is that after 2 years, we were able to go on Visita Iglesias again! We were so happy to do this family tradition again. Going around the city to visit the churches we used to go to Mass to felt surreal after being home most of the time for 2 years.

#2 is that we were able to go to a priest for confession once again after 2 years of doing spiritual confessions only due to the pandemic. We were able to do this a couple of days before my birthday this year. It was like my birthday gift. We went to Greenbelt Chapel for this sacrament because they do their confessions in the open and not in enclosed boxes or confessionals like many churches. We felt safer. I was very particular with safety because it was not just my husband and me who needed to confess but our 2 older children as well. It was also the first time for my second child to go to confession.

#1 is that we were able to attend Mass again in the church and not just online!!! Actually, we were outside the church most of the time since we prefer to experience it al fresco. We believe it is still safer that way for all of us, especially for our children, since the Sunday Masses in our parish are inside an air-conditioned church. Our youngest still likes to remove his mask every now and then. What is important for us is that we get to attend the Eucharistic celebration again in the church and receive Holy Communion again. We started attending Mass in the church on Palm Sunday. We also joined two of the church services during the Triduum.

Then, on the Sundays thereafter, including Easter Sunday, we had been attending Mass in the church also. On some weekends, we joined anticipated Masses (Saturday evenings) instead because we had to go to my parents’ house in Rizal.

These are all answered prayers! We so looked forward to these days. I thank God that, somehow, things are going back to normal and we are able to do things that we used to do again after 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I pray that there will be no more restrictions again in the future. I also pray that there will be no more discrimination between those who chose to be part of the COVID-19 experimental vaccine and those who opted to be part of the control group or who chose not to be part of the experiment. I strongly believe that discrimination of ANY kind is not aligned with our Christian faith. Jesus has been actively breaking barriers between groups during His time. He was so opposed to these practices. I admire and laud churches that did not impose discriminatory policies on their members during the pandemic.

I hope that you and your family also had a meaningful Lent and Holy Week and that you are experiencing the joy of Easter now.

Did you have any answered prayers also during Lent and this Easter? Feel free to share in the comments.